


Take Me Home To My Heart

by daydreamingstoryteller



Series: Mel's Olivarry Week 2017 [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Day 3, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Happy Ending, M/M, Olivarry Week 2017, Soulmates, a bit of it at least, follows canon for the most part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 09:53:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11483913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daydreamingstoryteller/pseuds/daydreamingstoryteller
Summary: The universe and fate hate Oliver Queen and Barry Allen. Basically, Oliver and Barry have shitty luck when it comes to soulmates. Well, at least at first they do.Written for Olivarry Week 2017 Day 3: Soulmate AU





	Take Me Home To My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I'm perpetually late like Barry I guess. Again, same drill. Sorry for any major mistakes it's all my fault. I'm just proud I managed to get this out since I've never made it to Day 3 for any ship weeks before. Anyway, I hope you like it!

Soulmate words.

No one knows how they work.

A small percentage of the world’s population are born with the words on their wrist. Legends and folklore say that they’re the lucky ones. They don’t have to wonder if and when their words will show up, or whether they have a soulmate out there at all. However, these people only make up about sixteen percent of the population.

The rest are born with no words on their wrists at all. For the majority, their words only appear after they have met their soulmate and the soulmate has said that sentence or phrase out loud to them. Even in this scenario, no can predict how or when the soulmarks (as they are generally called) will appear.

To some, the words are the first thing their soulmates says to them - they appear right after they’ve met them for the first time. For others, the soulmarks are part of a phrase – the pair of soulmates completes each other’s sentence just as those words appear on their skin.

Like I said, no one really knows how they work. Everything about them is random at best, with multiple different accounts of soulmate meetings being recorded throughout the course of history. Even the timings of when the words will appear differ for everyone. One could go for years being friends with a person and not know that they’re soulmates until they graduate high school, get married, or even on their deathbeds. Those with the latter scenarios are universally considered to be the most unlucky ones. Everyone agrees that that’s the worst time of all to find your mate and all hope that they won’t be one of those cursed pairs.

Romantic movies have always taken a liking to this concept of soulmates and explored pretty much all variations of the soulmate meetings. But in the end, nothing can prepare one for the actual meeting nor can they truly predict how it will go. Fate really is a fickle thing.  

 

\--~--

 

For the longest time, Oliver Queen considered the entire notion of soulmates to be stupid. He didn’t believe in it. His parents, Moira and Robert Queen were not soulmates. Yet, they believed they were. Neither of them had words on their wrist, but they had a happy life. Looking at them, Oliver always thought that finding his soulmate was not worth his effort.

When Laurel Lance came along, Oliver fell for her. He was drawn to her like she was the sun and he was a planet in her orbit – like she was _the one_. She made him start believing in soulmates. So he asked her out, and they dated for a while. Soon after their first year anniversary though, Oliver started to worry that maybe he was wrong. Neither Laurel nor he had words and what if by being too focused on her, he was missing out on finding his actual soulmate? Not wanting to lose Laurel and yet, not wanting to miss any opportunity, Oliver started to cheat. He went behind Laurel’s back and found other girls – and guys too- and slept around with them. That is, until the island.

On the island, when he was broken, scared and on the verge of giving up, the thought of Laurel was what kept him going. Every time he faltered, he remembered her voice and her love and that gave him the strength to continue.  In those five years of hell, he really began to believe that Laurel was his soulmate. If she wasn’t, then why was the thought of her the one thing that kept him sane all this time? Alas, fate really didn’t like Oliver. After literally surviving through hell, he came back home only to discover that Laurel had found her soulmate. It was Tommy. Honestly, how could Oliver possibly get in between that?

So he threw himself into being the vigilante and pushed aside all thoughts on his soulmate and soulmark. Then the Undertaking happened and it only brought him more sorrow and grief. He could still remember the raw pain in Laurel’s voice as the building collapsed and the mark on her wrist turned white. Afterwards, when Moira was released, she pulled her children aside and told them the truth. That Thea was Malcom Merlyn’s daughter and that Merlyn was Moira’s soulmate. Only then did Oliver realize that his initial opinion of soulmates was right. They were just too much trouble and not worth anything.

Then suddenly Merlyn was still alive, Moira died, Slade and his Mirakuru warriors destroyed the city. He thought it couldn’t get any worse than that. In that aftermath, he figured out that while soulmates he was tired of, his heart still yearned for that kind of connection with someone.

He found Felicity and for a while they tried to make it work. But soon enough, Ray Palmer walked into their lives and turned everything sideways. Felicity came up to Oliver one day and told him that she didn’t want to risk the chance of losing her soulmate by being tethered to him. After all, they’d known each other for three years. If they were soulmates she reasoned that they’d have known by now.  Fate was laughing at Oliver and he knew it.

Looking back at his entire life, looking at all the soulmate pairs he knew, - from his mom and Merlyn, Thea and Roy, Tommy and Laurel, to Slade and Shadow and Digg and Lyla – Oliver only saw pain and trouble. Not everyone gets to have soulmates or happily ever afters.  Deep inside he knew that he still wanted – so desperately wanted and needed - all of that but nine years of pain didn’t let him believe he deserved it. Anyway, he figured that if he ever was going to find his soulmate, knowing his luck, it’d probably be when either of them was dying.

 

\--~--

 

Barry Allen had a great life up until he was eleven. His mom and dad, Nora and Henry Allen, were happily married for fourteen years even though they didn’t know for sure that they were soulmates. They taught their son Barry that it’s ok to love someone else who maybe wasn’t their soulmate if he believed in that love and believed in other person. If anyone asked them, they always answered that they were soulmates and that they didn’t need a mark to prove it. While they said that they felt a bond stronger than a soulmate bond, they never knew for sure. Until that is, the day Nora Allen died.

When Barry ran off to prison to meet his dad for the first time since being brought in by Joe west, his dad showed him his wrist. His father’s eyes filled with tears but even still, he looked at Barry and said, “Look here slugger. Always told ya we were soulmates. Now I know for sure eh?”

That night, Barry cried for the first time since losing his entire world.

From then on, Barry started to throw himself into criminal science and forensics as he tried to block away all the pain and loss. After a while, it got easier to not feel it. The lies and the fake smiles helped. During the times when he wanted to run away and do whatever he could to make the pain stop, he always remembered that he’s got someone out there waiting for him.

He started to pour all his belief into his soulmate and the bond. His parents were right about being soulmates so whoever he falls in love with, should also be his soulmate he assumed. So for the next fourteen years of his life, Barry Allen fell deeper in love with his soulmate, and Iris West, all the while believing that they were one and the same.

It’s just tragic that rarely has anything gone right in Barry Allen’s life. Waking up from the particle accelerator and realizing he’s missed nine months of his life hurt Barry. But that hurt was minuscule when compared to the realization that he was wrong all along. He was not Iris’s soulmate. Her soulmate was Detective Pretty Boy – Eddie Thawne.

Barry didn’t know what to believe then. He felt so unsure about everything. There was always one thing he had believed and that was that Iris was his soulmate. To be proven wrong made him feel like throwing up. So he ignored the feeling of loss and focused his attention into being a superhero. And when everything in his life started falling apart, he didn’t have time to think about soulmates or anything else.

The paper from the future reading Iris West-Allen and Thawne’s words about Iris and him being married in the other timeline didn’t do anything to help him. In the end, it only made him push Iris away more and made him almost give up on his love life. When he finally got around to dating, after realizing that he has to move on – he won’t let Thawne’s words come true; he’ll be happy - , he screwed that up by being his usual secretive self.

The last straw fell when Iris came up to him after Henry’s funeral to talk. She confessed that she’d started to have feelings for him, but that she didn’t want to act on them at all.

“I Love you Bare. But I’ve loved you more like a brother than I’ve ever loved you as anything else. You have to understand that. Even though right now, we could try giving us ago, I don’t want to because I don’t want to keep you from your soulmate. A soulmate bond is special Bare, and I know how much you’ve always loved the idea of it – don’t even try to deny it. I just don’t want to be the one to stand in the way of that. I’m only telling you this because I think that you should know how I feel. If anything, you deserve my honesty Barry.” She said solemnly.

A part of Barry wanted to protest and say that he’s loved her more than he’s ever loved the idea of his soulmate after hearing what she said. Inside though, he knew that that would be a lie. Ever since that day his mother died, he’s fallen in love with the idea of his soulmate more than anything else in his life. While he had loved iris, he’d loved her even more because he truly believed that she was the one.

So because of that, Barry and Iris both moved on from each other. Yet they still stayed close friends and were practically like siblings. Although a part of Barry would always be in love with Iris, most of him was still waiting and searching for his soulmate.

 

\--~--

 

The Invasion was over. The aliens had retreated, and the after party was also coming to an end. After sending Kara and Sara off to their respective worlds and timeships, Barry and Oliver decided to take a break to catch up.

They sat there for an hour in silence, just enjoying each other’s company. When they did start talking, conversation flowed from their battles to life and loss.

“We both got a look at what life would be like normal. It would have been happy. But not for long” Barry whispered.

“No. Not at all.” Oliver added.

“It wouldn’t have been full either.”

“Not without…Yea.”

Barry raised his bottle of beer towards Oliver.

“To things not being normal.”  Barry said.

“To life being full.” Oliver answered.

As the heroes clinked their bottles and downed their beer, a sharp and searing pain shot through their wrists.

When they looked down, words had appeared on their previously bare wrists.

Oliver’s had words that Barry had just uttered mere seconds ago. _‘To things not being normal.’_

Barry’s wrist had Oliver’s words. _‘To life being full.’_

They looked up at each other, green-hazel eyes looking into clear blue ones.

For a second or two everything stood still and neither man moved a muscle. It was like the entire bar had gone silent in that one instant.

Then, slowly Oliver smiled. Hesitant, he gently moved his hand – the one with the new mark – on top of Barry’s hand on the counter; their marks barely touching each other.

Glancing down at their hands, Barry smiled too. He interlinked their hands and squeezed it reassuringly. When he looked back up, Oliver was still looking at him.

And somehow, everything was just perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> Personally, this is by far my most favourite Olivarry fic to write and it was definitely the most fun. I've got fics planned for Day 4 and 5 so y'all can look forward to that but til then, leave comments to help feed my writing!! ^^
> 
> The title is from 'Shattered' by Trading Yesterday. I listened to this as I was writing and it really helped set the mood. Also, I'm like 80% sure that I'll be turning this verse into a series. There were so many scenes that I wanted to get into more detail about but couldn't cus of lack of time. But what do you guys think? Should I make this AU into a series?


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